Page 25 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)

THIRTEEN

Felix stared at the curled up figure of his bride in his bed with deep satisfaction.

He could’ve put her in the bedroom connected to his. It’d been designed for her, technically, with all the womanly shit his future bride would need ready and waiting.

He’d never intended on keeping his bride close. It was always supposed to be an arrangement of mutual benefit, not one of affection. She’d have her life and he’d have his. They’d meet in the middle for feeding and breeding, but that’d be all. Even that would wither after an heir was born.

It was all he could stomach.

Maybe in another life there might’ve been a chance for him to warm up to his faceless blood bride, but that chance was shot in the face when he met Dahlia McKnight.

He fully intended on doing what he had to. Felix couldn’t afford the luxury of indulging in his feelings, and he’d worked too fucking hard to sacrifice his place as head of the family for anything. Even her.

So he’d planned everything out with meticulous attention to detail, as was his way, to keep the faceless woman as far from him as possible.

Separate bedrooms. Separate responsibilities. Separate lives.

His bedroom would always belong to Dahlia, even after she left his life. No other woman would sleep between his sheets or curl up amongst his pillows.

It never occurred to him to think he might get lucky enough to keep her there.

His fingers itched to trace every inch of her. The fall of her golden hair over the cream pillowcase and the gentle slope of her bare shoulder peeking out from beneath the blankets made his mouth water.

Fucking her wasn’t enough. It’d never be enough. He needed everything she had to give.

He’d always had a greedy heart. Felix was rarely satisfied, his restless ambition always jumping to the next goal, the next challenge. It was the thrill of winning that spurred him on. Every prize only made him hungrier for a bigger, better score.

Nothing was bigger or better than having Dahlia McKnight as his blood bride.

It was so good that it was literally unimaginable. He wasn’t one for believing in miracles, but it was hard to see it as anything but.

The object of his obsession had been neatly packaged into his perfect bride. Now she’d never escape him.

Felix forced himself away from the bed and into his closet, where he found a new shirt to replace the one his girl had ruined. A fond smile curved his mouth at the memory, but it came with a small pang of worry that sped his steps toward the door.

As much as it pained him to leave her, he forced himself out into the hall. He doubted he’d be back any time soon. Sleep would have to wait. There were too many arrangements to make.

The Bowans would know about his little heist soon, if they didn’t already, and they all had to be ready for what would come when the inevitable demand for her handover was refused.

They’d handle it. The new generation of Amauris — his cousins — had seen him through the war against the old guard and that viper, Yvanna. They’d come out of it stronger than they’d gone in, their bonds and loyalty solidified by spilled blood. They could take a few Bowans.

What concerned him most at that moment wasn’t the fact that he’d stolen Alastair’s daughter, but her care.

Tough as she was, Dahlia had clearly been through too much.

He’d barely been able to get her out of the bath before she passed out, her too-thin body exhausted even after she forced down a bottle of synth.

Felix didn’t do well with worry. He did much better with lists. Tasks. Logical steps leading to a clear end point.

So he made his list as he stalked to his office, where Milo and his half-brother Luis were waiting for him.

Their gazes immediately landed on the vicious little marks Dahlia left on his neck and collar. He’d deliberately left more buttons of his shirt undone than usual just to show them off.

Luis, the older of the pair, let out a low whistle.

He sat in one of the low leather chairs arrayed around a glass coffee table, his long legs spread and his tattooed arms draped over the armrests.

Like usual, he looked like he couldn’t care less what was going on, but Felix knew him too well to buy it.

“That was fast,” he chuckled. His smile was bright white against his golden skin. “She must be something. I can’t wait to meet her.”

Felix held up a finger as he strode to his desk at the far end of the room. “Watch it, shithead. That’s my bride.”

Luis had always liked danger a little too much. It was allegedly part of his charm, and also why he teased, “I don’t see a bite yet. I might still have a chance.”

Milo stood against one tall bookshelf, his big body stiff and his frown thunderous. “You want Felix to kill you?”

“I could probably take him,” Luis glibly replied, waving one scarred hand in his half-brother’s direction.

“Trust me when I say that even if you managed to kill me — and you’d have to — you wouldn’t be able to handle Dahlia.

” Felix sat heavily in his desk chair. His skin crawled with the urgency to get back to her, and even though he knew for a fact Luis was only joking, a wave of possessiveness made him grind his teeth.

I like Luis, he reminded himself. He makes me a lot of money. It’d be annoying if he died in a mysterious, gruesome accident.

Like he could see the murder in his eyes, Milo let out a put-upon sigh and meandered over to the chairs in front of his desk. Though he was the younger sibling, Milo seemed to always place himself between Luis and danger — in this case, Felix.

Luis propped his feet up on the coffee table like the animal he was. “Is she the little secret you’ve been keeping?”

“She’s mine,” he answered shortly. It was all he or anybody needed to know.

Milo leaned his elbows on his knees. “Are you sure she’s neutral?”

The gland in the roof of his mouth pulsed with renewed fury. Felix snorted. “Yeah, I’m pretty fucking sure. Just standing next to her makes it feel like my fangs are going to explode.”

If she wasn’t venom neutral, her scent would’ve put him off immediately, regardless of their prior relationship.

It was pure survival instinct for vampires to be disgusted at the idea of wanting to fuck or feed on each other.

Even allowing that perhaps her body hadn’t completely finished its transition, he would’ve felt it.

Still, he’d restrained himself from biting her. He didn’t want to. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever wanting anything more than that when he had his cock buried in the vice of her wet cunt and she practically begged him for it.

He was absolutely certain she was venom neutral, and yet…

“I need Alvin to take a look at her. I trust my nose, but I’m not risking poisoning her because I can’t wait one night to get a sip.

She needs to be tested. Actually, she needs a full work-up.

Everything. I want to be sure she’s completely healthy before I touch her.

Once that’s done, I want Marietta to get her settled.

My girl’s going to need a friend to answer questions and get her things to make her feel at home. Whatever Dahlia needs, she gets.”

He paused before adding, “And I want the bed taken out of the bridal suite. She can do what she wants with the space but she’s not sleeping there.”

Felix drummed his claws on the desk, the list unspooling in his mind in order of most urgent to least. “Milo, I need a full report on what the fuck went down at The Lush. This worked out in our favor, but the fact that a fuck-up of this scale happened to my girl is unacceptable.”

She was there. She was there. She was there.

The knowledge that Dahlia had been on that roof with Yvanna and he hadn’t even known was like fine grains of glass under his skin. He knew his girl was stubborn and didn’t trust him, but to not say anything at all about the fact that she’d clearly been injured was?—

He forced himself to take a deep breath.

Felix didn’t do self-loathing or regret. That meant looking back on shit that was done and couldn’t be changed. What he did do was cause and effect. Actions and consequences.

Action: He’d been careless.

Consequence: His girl was put in harm’s way.

Action: Dahlia hid what had happened to her.

Consequence: He’d make sure she never did that again .

“I want her hospital records sent to Alvin and then I want them wiped,” he continued. “Luis, you’ll pay a visit to the doctor who sold her out first thing tomorrow night. No one should have the information on her that he does.”

The brothers nodded, all business now.

Milo said, “I got all her records while you were gone. You want them?”

“Are they just from today?”

“No. There’s normal check-up stuff, but there’s also a visit to the ER the same night as the hit.”

Any remnant of the pleasant after-sex buzz that had stubbornly clung to him vanished. Hand stilling on the desk, he murmured, “Tell me how bad it was.”

Milo blew out a breath. “Boss, maybe you?—”

“Now.”

Grimacing, he said, “She got lucky. When I compared the Patrol report to her hospital record, I was able to piece together where she must’ve been when the explosive went off.

She was standing across from Yvanna, presumably close to Alastair.

I don’t know what happened between those two, since he’s not in the report, but she arrived at the hospital with… ”

He trailed off. Milo wasn’t one to mince words or hesitate, so the fact that he really didn’t want to tell Felix what had happened to Dahlia made his stomach churn.

Keeping his voice flat, he prompted, “Finish.”

“The intake notes say she was impaled by a piece of a metal table. There was a major puncture wound in her left shoulder and several shrapnel wounds on her face and limbs. She also had a minor concussion.” He rubbed his jaw again, his gaze averted.

“Where Alastair fits into that… I don’t know.

She told the doctor that she was absolutely certain it was his blood that got in her wound, though. ”

Impaled.

Dahlia had been impaled. And she hadn’t told him.

It wasn’t just fury that made his mind go blank. It was betrayal. Another more well-adjusted person might’ve called it hurt, but he wasn’t one of those, so the fact that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him she’d been catastrophically injured registered as an insult.

He’d spoken to her the next night and she’d sounded off, but he’d chalked it up to the fact that she’d been rattled.

After years of back and forth between them, he just assumed that she’d be smart enough to tell him if she so much as got a paper cut.

It seemed obvious to him that being impaled by a fucking table warranted at least a phone call.

Dahlia had actively and knowingly shut him out when she needed him. She hadn’t trusted him to care for her when she was at her most vulnerable. She’d tacitly informed him that he was unfit, unworthy, and unwelcome.

She’d tried to reject him.

The air in the office was heavy with the weight of his anger. No one spoke. No one even moved as he stared out into the middle distance, processing this new information and assimilating it into his plans.

Luis and Milo shared a look. All the good humor had left the older of the pair. He liked to tease and pick fights, but even Luis knew how serious it was to have an anchor, a bride, hide something of that magnitude.

Still not looking at them, Felix said, “Tell me what you would do in this situation.”

Neither man answered him for a beat. Surprisingly, it was Milo who spoke up first.

“I’d lock her in the house until she understood how stupid that was. You can’t hide shit like that from your man. How are you supposed to keep her safe if she won’t tell you when she’s been hurt?”

Luis snorted. “Lock her in the house? Grow up, man. You want to make her understand? That’s what a little bit of pussy torture is for. She won’t make the same mistake twice if you tie her to your bed and leave a vibrator on her for a few hours.”

Both options had their appeal, certainly, but he doubted either would work on Dahlia. Locking her in a cage wouldn’t break her, and neither would a bit of pleasure-pain. She was too fucking stubborn.

Felix sighed. He’d just have to find his own way to settle things between them.